Friday, March 11, 2016

£1 million and counting.....

Yesterday's post about the failure of Sinfini Music clearly struck a nerve and has prompted some illuminating discussion. In my article I estimated that Sinfini burnt through around £1 million of funding. This exchange in the public domain on Facebook between two knowledgeable people is particularly illuminating:

A - Loving the supposedly bold estimate of the cost of the thing. Way to go yet.B - Indeed. It burnt through that before it had even been launched.

Just think what our financially challenged performing ensembles could do with the millions that Universal Music flushed down the toilet at Sinfini - the English National Opera chorus immediately springs to mind. The tragedy of all this is that very little of the wasted money reached the musicians at the bottom of the food chain, but instead went to consultants and other middle feeders. Sinfini's stated aim was to help its audience "discover the very best of classical music", which is precisely what ENO and the many other fine but struggling ensembles are doing, and will continue to do long after this sorry saga is conveniently forgotten. Now I wonder when the 'inside track' journalists who wrote for Sinfini are going to run this story?

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).